Brain trust

BookPage® Column by Gavin Grant

The second novel from Canadian writer Minister Faust (after The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad) is From the Notebooks of Dr. Brain and it might be one of the most entertaining books to cross your path this year. Open it and you'll find a novel that's also a self-help book for superheroes by Dr. Eva Brain-Silverman, therapist to heroes, or the extraordinarily-abled as they're known here. Dr. Brain is the author of Why Do Bad Villains Happen to Good Heroes? and Bulletproof, Schmulletproof and has been called in to help out the six members of the Fantastic Order of Justice. Now that all their foes and archenemies have been either killed or locked up in a super-prison, Asteroid Zed, the members of the team are finding regular life tough, and dealing with one another even tougher. Faust is an original writer with a passionate interest in people be they crazy or normal and his pulpy satire takes accurate swings at our me-first society and the pop culture idols who have floated to the top. Gavin J. Grant runs Small Beer Press in Northampton, Massachusetts.